


lead by a beating heart

by sailorjupiter (valkyrierising)



Category: Kamen Rider Build
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, F/M, Team Feels, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 15:03:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14263644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valkyrierising/pseuds/sailorjupiter
Summary: Since she left the orphanage, her life has been a carefully spun web of lies, half-truths and deceptions. Her name is the only thing that still belongs to herself.The only thing she can still do is pick up the pieces.





	lead by a beating heart

**Author's Note:**

> Honest to god, this was supposed to be just smut because I live in the land of idiot rarepairs and then it was like 'you know what would pair best with smut? Going into Sawa's backstory.' There is strong sexual content further in parts 6 and 8. Title comes from Bastille's "Laura Palmer."

Sawa has given everything to her country in the name of doing it for the greater good. It wasn’t, and it doesn’t matter if she knew or not, because she cannot claim ignorance or be absolved of the blood on her hands. The mess she helped created weighs on her, as it should, because if she were a stronger woman, she probably would have died before doing what she had done, defected, or at the very least kept a grip on her morality. Since she left the orphanage, her life has been a carefully spun web of lies, half-truths and deceptions. Her name is the only thing that still belongs to herself.

The only thing she can still do is pick up the pieces.

Survival is easy - it's what she knows how to do. It's all they taught her. Of course there were other things they taught her - gaining trust, how to plant bugs without being caught, how to survive underwater submersion, how to survive Hazard (if she was strong enough) - but none of them were as important as continuing the mission. And if they were caught, which wasn’t a desirable option, they should die before they turned. The survival tactics weren’t taught for genuine concern of her well-being because above all else, the children of Nanba were trained to find the potential of Project Build and the use it held for him. All of it was for what Build could do for _him_.

Then she met Sento and Misora, and Ryuga and Kazumi and the other riders dying to protect their friends. The mission was all that counted with Nanba - and their mission was to protect their friends, their countries. The entirety of Japan. And she began to doubt. Kernels of doubt already within, learning more and more what Build meant and why he wanted it so bad. She knew that all of them wanted so desperately to be wanted, told they were useful and be commended.

The truth is, she was the worst spy. She doubted from the beginning. Believed that she could still keep her friendship with Sento and report on him. He was a better man than anyone could ever hope to be, forgave her and took her in when he had no reason to. It brought into focus how exhausting it was that her life was one deception after the other.

 

\--

 

What she remembers most from her time being trained to be a spy is how secluded they were. How they were taught to trust no one because they were the only ones who were worthy to carry the cause - to raise Touto higher than before.

They felt different. She never realized - or maybe she did, and she just ignored it - how much she wanted someone to trust, how tired she was of looking behind her.

It starts in how she realizes how much she cares for Misora, when they find out that Soichi wasn’t who they believed him to be. That one was information she wasn’t privy to. Misora’s utter devastation made her feel angry on the other girl’s behalf, her absolute desolation for when she returned the cafe and saw her curled up in herself. She reminds her of herself in a distant way, if fate had been kinder. She wanted retaliation for her. It meant so much that Misora cared enough to be angry at her betrayal, who had no reason to forgive her like she did, and to still love her.

Or maybe it’s how she realizes how easily they accepted Kazumi to their team, despite his unpredictability. And if they could accept him, surely they could accept her?

She tells Sento because if there’s one thing he deserves, it’s her honesty. Especially after the first betrayal. Sento has a way of looking at someone and getting to their core, leaving her feeling like an open wire exposed to water. He isn’t upset when she tells him, more pensive this time around.

“I don’t have many allies,” he says after the words unravel from her soul, the weight of the secrets released. “And you lied to us. But it wasn’t by choice.” He helps her, devises part of the plan to keep her safe and let’s her make the addendum about the children.

She ponders his words about choice. It always comes down to choice, and she had made hers a long time ago. She choose to harm them. She couldn’t undo it even if she so desperately wanted to, but she could try to make amends. When Sento listens to her and doesn’t cast her out, treats her like a friend still, she knows that she has found people to call her own.

Sento is like Atlas in a way, in that he carries the war and their pain and makes it his own, places them on his shoulders. She cannot and will not let him deal with it alone. She is indebted to him and to a certain degree, the rest of them. They still wanted her and that’s what counts.

Nascita feels like what she imagines a home would be. There’s so much trepidation but within the café, there is a lightness that isn’t outside. Hope bubbles within, even in such desolate times.

 

\--

 

There’s a part of her she locked away during training - a box that held hopes and dreams. Where she had hopes of being adopted into a family that would love her, that wanted to be a journalist, dancer, teacher, where she wouldn’t have to conceal her emotions or recite mental chants to keep her heart rate down. She put it all away in the box where Nanba couldn’t touch it. It was a secret that couldn't be used against anyone.

The thing about her lies is that they went for miles on end. She doesn’t know where they end and where her truths begin. How much of those lies were based in some truths, but ultimately made to fit some other purposes. Untangling the lies is lengthy work, understanding that they are not her like the few truths are: that she is Sawa Takigawa, an orphan and a legitimate journalist. But day by day, she is able to understand that they lies were not the sum of her. They don’t belong to her, not like her present and future do. But it’s hard when they weigh on her still, reminding her that she has never once been able to belong to herself and she has no idea where to begin now - not as a spy nor very helpful. Her brand of fighting wasn’t useful - not like Ryuga who was a trained fighter, or a soldier like Kazumi who can take someone down easily.

Kazumi’s the most interesting one. He cares just as much as the rest of them do. It is quieter though and mistaken for indifference at first glance, but he is so acutely aware of all of them. The composed way of his carelessness that masks how lethal he can be.

He keeps to himself mostly, looking down at the dog tags wrapped within his fist or kept by his neck a few times daily, shy around Misora that she can’t help but snort at. He is probably the most skilled of all of them, but it is an odd quality to him. She also knows that he knew about her second betrayal before the others did. Again, he is a soldier, and was the most likely to find out besides Sento but that he didn’t share the information was odd to say the least.

He says nothing when Sento tells him, agreeing to her request to stop by to save children who were in danger.

She doesn’t know what to quite make of him where everyone is so clearly heroic and well-meaning, but he doesn’t turn on them like she would have expected and he doesn’t begrudge them. She still doesn’t trust him though. Where Sento made her feel exposed, Kazumi knew the core of what she was.

 

\--

 

What they have is a connection: a tenuous one forged entirely of circumstance. Neither she nor he would have given each other more than a second look. Had the war not broken out, they wouldn’t have been in the same country. She was a journalist. He was a farmer turned soldier turned farmer again, turned the last of Hokuto's standing heroes. Symbols were important. They gave the people something to look to, something to inspire them and keep them going. Team Kamen Rider was for the people.

That he doesn’t ask of what she wants him to do at the orphanage is a testament to how much he knew about her, far more than any of them did. Her research before informed him as a previous soldier when he antagonized Sento and Ryuga; what she knows of war is through the long-term subterfuge Nanba invested in her fellow division. War was waged through physical battles which he would engage in once he had his hands on Build; what Nanba was involved in at present, in his own words, was deep state intelligence gathering.

Sento may have been the Devil’s scientist but he was absolved of it - in his amnesia and his confrontation of it, his work to stop the war as fast as possible to minimize the casualties. She and Kazumi knew of the horrors up close, in different ways. There’s blood on all of their hands but somehow she thinks hers would be the worst.

It’s an impulse that occurs once she and Misora are bandaging them up following the successful deployment of TankTank. It’s another testament that Sento could do the impossible through sheer force of will alone, altering the equation in record time that would have taken Nanba’s scientists longer to get right. Misora does it for Ryuga while she gets Sento and Kazumi. Sento takes it about as well as he does, which means minimal complaining, but he lets her fret. Kazumi stares but doesn’t fight her when she pulls him onto the chair and cleans the dirt and blood from his face.

“You should be more careful,” she says, busying herself with the disinfectant.

“You asked me to go there,” he shrugs. She gives him her most unimpressed stare, his eyes tracking hers when they look up briefly. She wants to ask why he didn’t expose her, why he even agreed to help her but she holds the words back. Instead, she presses her mouth into a line as she finishes the last of it. He is not _not_ handsome, she thinks as she finishes getting more of the blood and dirt away. The cream to clear up the bruising is gentle as she swipes at his bruising lightly.

When she is sure Misora and Ryuga have left to return to the lab, she whispers to him as she makes the cream less prominent on his skin.

“Thank you. Truly.” She thinks she imagines how he seems to press his jaw into her hand when hers moves to search for hidden injuries. She wipes the cream to fold her arms across her chest, leaning back as he touched at her handiwork.

“How did you know though - about me?”

“I know the look in your eyes,” he starts. He has usually spoken so damnably slow, unflappable except in extenuating circumstances. She is glad he is taking all the time in the world for this, unsure if she wants to hear the words he’ll say next. “It’s what some of us got once we returned from the war, if we survived it.”

She nods once more, hands tight at her own sides as she looks past him while he continues to watch her. Her hand moves to his face on her own accord, shocking herself at how they move to one of his cuts and stay there.

“I owe you then.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” he says, getting up as she jumps back a little.

“You could have unraveled the lie earlier,” she says, shaking slightly. “I could be lying once again and you all wouldn’t believe me because what would another lie be to the ones I’ve told, the secrets I’ve kept. You don’t even know me.”

“I don’t know you,” he agrees. It’s jarring that he’s so close to her, making it so she’s pressed up against the counter. “You’re a good liar - that much is obvious. But you were cracking long before I ever showed up. You,” a tap at her heart, “wanted to be found out. Shreds of integrity left.” They stand there for too long, her own eyes tracking the minute twitch of his jaws, how he flexes his fingers in front of her heart.

“Integrity dies in the darkness,” she tilts her head, a questioning look. He baffles her, how he looks disinterested and removed but knows too much. “I would know.”

“Not always. Not necessarily.” He brushes a strand of her hair from her face, the shock enough to send her remaining thoughts scattering. “Thanks for the clean up.”

He leaves her in the silence of Nascita, confused and disoriented.

Their connection is borne of something that is not pain. It’s not like the guilt they all share of having a hand in this war; a collective mea culpa that she thinks the others don’t deserve to feel. Their connection is that they know of the skeletons they carry - a memento of this war they helped foster further.

 

\--

 

For lack of a better word, they are too good to be around. The cynical part of her wishes she could be like them - forgiving and hopeful. Nanba had made sure most of that was shredded, replaced by effective means of manipulation. He, however, is not. He reminds her of her past, what she has done. She wouldn’t go as far as to call him comfortable but she trusts him. And strangely enough, she thinks he trusts her. Their silence is an understanding of the guilt they feel: hers for what she carries and his for feeling that it was his fault his friend’s died

In response to absolutely nothing, he talks to her as she leans back from her laptop. She has been looking at files she was able to steal from Nanba’s personal notes, extensive dossiers of the Skywall and Pandora’s box but nothing they hadn’t already known.

“You know what your problem is? You never had a choice.”

She slants a look over to him as he leans back on his chair, legs outstretched.

"We all have a choice, Kazumi.”

“Not like we did. It was what you were taught. Can you really be faulted for it?”

“I knew what was happening wasn’t good for anyone and I still agreed, still carried out plans that endangered millions of lives.

"Is it a choice when the other option is a shitty one? When you’re a child and all you know is you want to be loved?"

“I can’t be absolved of what I did. Can I return to my research you aren’t helping me with?”

“You call yourself a journalist?” He smirks, gaining an eye roll as he rearranges himself closer to her laptop screen.

“I was called a lot of things,” she mutters, uncomfortably aware of the distance he’s closed that puts him right within her space.

She doesn’t move though, allows him to be closer than he should be. They do this a few more times, or rather, he does this a few more times of crossing into her boundaries. She doesn’t mind like she should, selfishly glad there is someone with a close enough background to hers and removed enough that she doesn’t get guilt-stricken. He is neutral ground.

 

\--

 

The careful pushing into her boundaries is nothing in comparison to the itch he leaves under her skin. Consequences be damned, she wants to feel something that isn’t fear or anxiety. So she pulls him closer, just to kiss him once.

He is caught unaware, mouth slanted awkwardly from hers as she leads before he gets the hang of it. She knows he is strong, seen him fight against Sento and Ryuga and the other riders. It’s a very different thing to be held against the wall at the very back corner of Nascita. It’s not like anyone would come by, evacuating the citizens as needed to safer locations. But it is still an open area that anyone could walk into and see.

So to the corner it is then, hidden as well as it is open and it’s useless but she finds that she doesn’t care. His hands are rough, calloused with farmwork and not all that gentle, gripping the leg that’s wrapped around his that she’s certain will leave a bruise later. She doesn’t care as she hikes it up further, rubbing herself against him as his hands trace circles under skirt and slide up onto her thighs, soothing the goosebumps that come from the fact that her skirt is hiked up, legs exposed to the still frost-ridden air as winter didn’t want to leave just yet.

He enters her with his fingers, keeping himself at a distance to watch her pitch against him, grasps onto the legs she wraps tighter around him, and holds on. Her heart jackhammers inside her chest, like the rattling of bullets she knows he can’t hear but if he could would probably laugh at.

She’s nervous constantly, waiting for retaliation despite knowing that she is safe with them, even though they won’t let anything happen to her. Worried about them as Soichi could kill them but is biding his time for something. She is tired of this heightened state of paranoia that replacing it with Kazumi seems like a good enough substitute. The desperation claws at her skins as he establishes a rhythm - the sole finger inside her not even close to enough that she moves against it herself, willing another to be added.

Despite everything about him, from his attitude to the mania that overtakes him at points, he treats her respectably. Like she’s glass. Even as the others treat her the same as before, he keeps an eye on her. She’s still not sure what to make of it yet. It’s not an unfair assumption to make that she could betray but what’s more intriguing is that he even cares about her, like this whole mess isn’t at least mostly her fault, like she isn’t the least trustworthy of them for miles.

“Please,” she lets out in a strangled whisper, the air filled with nothing but the noises their bodies made, grateful when he situates her higher on his hips to add two more fingers, backing her against the wall to be held in place by his upper body. She’s not quiet in the least but she knows how to keep her noises muffled as he works her to the edge, adept at following the small noises she makes against his chest, crooking his fingers to a decent angle. The stars that burst at the corner of her eyes cause her to lose the hold on his shoulders momentarily but the wall situation keeps her from falling. He enters her shortly after, barely allowing her recovery time as he fills her. Her hands seek purchase on his shoulders, his shirt, anything as he moves against her. She moves against him too, the overwhelming sensation so disorienting that she settles for moving her hands to under his shirt and digs her nails into his skin, raking across his back as he lets his own noise into the crook of her neck.

When it is all over he moves them towards the bathroom and cleans them in silence. It is only after he leaves her alone that she notices there’s a bite on her neck that she wasn’t the only one who had left a mark.

They do this a few more times - it is always her seeking him out, and it is him screwing her senseless and they always leave a mark on each other. Her nails, while short were sharp, and he did his best to keep most of the marks as nips on the inside of her thighs or bruising marks around her hips.

She isn't looking for tenderness. Truthfully, she didn't know what she expected out of this. A rebellion - the act of doing something purely selfish without being under duress or guilt-ridden. Another thing that belonged to her alone because she knew, even if the others didn’t, that Sento belonged to Ryuga and Misora and they to him and each other. To say it’s jealousy would be to assume what wasn’t there, rather than understand she has always been an outsider. She wants something for herself. If he knows, he doesn’t say anything - acquiescing to her always.

 

\--

 

There is something about him that makes confronting her past a little bit easier. With him, the weight of everything lessens and gets manageable, like she can get past it. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t waste time with many words, or the fact that their shared experiences means he doesn’t allow for much self flagellation. The relationship is more physical than anything. Stolen in between casual touches and the actual physical portion where he knows the fastest way to make her forget what haunts the edges of her memories. She offers the broken parts of her soul, her body to him as well.

“I joined the war because there was no other option for me,” he says as they sit in silence. “You have to survive somehow.” They finished dinner about an hour ago but they stayed above, not wanting to go down just yet. There is nothing for them to do but wait - the next part is all Misora and Queen Vernage.

“You did it because you were made to be a spy. That’s not all you are.”

“It’s all I was taught to be,” she turns to him, stirring the tea that still steams.

“It’s up to you really,” he flicks at a strand of hair from her face. “But you can’t undo what you’ve done.”

“Thanks,” she says dryly, batting at his hand as he catches hers

“You didn’t pick me because you wanted someone to tell you empty platitudes did you?” He rubs across her knuckles, knowing the callouses that bring her a sense of safety. “Because I may have been doing this entire relationship wrong.”

She huffs in response, wrapping her hand around his.

“If I wanted empty words I would have gone back,” she replies.

  
\--

 

There’s a closet upstairs that is overlooked. There’s a few supplies but ultimately it is empty. They go there sometimes when she feels like being quiet at a slightly louder level. She’s perched on a shelf that’s a part of a moveable one, thighs wrapped around his leg as he pulls her towards her climax.

When it is done, he pries her legs from his neck as her skirt flutters around her and he wipes at the corner of his mouth. There is pink lipstain of hers on there from earlier that she licks at her thumb to clean it, aware of how much her guard has gone down in the weeks spent with them and him.

"I don't think I deserve forgiveness,” she whispers to him as she finishes removing evidence of her from him. What she tells him is what she has refused to voice all this time. Despite all her efforts, there was still a voice that reminded her she was a spy, and she could never truly begin atonement.

"You think you don't," he muses and she is grateful that Kazumi is bluntly honest, "but Mii - Misora," he shakes his head, "forgave you. Which means even if you don't think you deserve forgiveness, you have it from her, so you have to live up to it."

"I’m not like the rest of you,” she shakes her head.

"You're part of Team Kamen Rider now, for better or worse."

"But this is also my fault," she says, straightening her clothes as she gets off from the perch. He helps her as she stands, pulling her shirt back into what it was.”

"Partially. You're not the only one to blame, you know. If Sento didn’t have enough guilt to fill Touto twice, your self loathing could drown us all." He stands there, watching as she does so. It feels like something tightens in her chest at his complete stillness

“You didn’t do anything wrong. Not when you were a child. Forgiveness is done from within and I think you know that you’ve punished yourself enough for it.”

“You’re deceptively wise,” she says as she presses a flutter-light kiss on him.

“I know, how does a handsome guy like me get so smart?” He smirks and she laughs, feels lighter than she has in weeks.

 

\--

 

She spends more time at Nascita than her actual apartment. Which means that sleeping arrangements get difficult but manageable. She has no idea how Sento, Ryuga and Misora can share on the bed but she thinks it might have to do with the octopus like combination of limbs that keeps them together. Or how there’s a soft place to land if they should fall, when inevitably Sento falls off first followed by Ryuga. She has her own sleeping mat besides Kazumi’s closer to the door, closest in case of an emergency.

“Tell me about your farm,” she whispers one night.

“Odd choice of pillow talk.” He barely opens his eyes. She rolls her eyes, pressing up to whisper to him. It’s useless considering the others sleep like the dead and whispering won’t wake them up, but still. She wants them to get as much rest as possible.

“Hokuto was always poor, you know this. We had our farm that could make enough but then the wall came up and Pandora’s box arrived and you know. It made all our work useless.”

“And yet you stayed. Helped the workers even when you could have left.” He turns to her, eyebrow raised slightly. “Sento told me,” she shrugs from her position on the floor. “You weren’t as cold as you made yourself to be.” He scoffs a little, pulling her closer to him and rearranges the blanket she has on top of the sleeping bag.

“I’ll show it you after this is all done.”

“I’d like that,” she says, closing her eyes. She knows that Nascita is what home feels like because the unease and fear that has been with since she was ten and left the orphanage unwinds from the grip it has on her soul, slowly but surely.

 


End file.
